In the midterm elections, we witnessed a dramatic reversal of fortune for the Democratic Party from their elections gains in 2008. When all the close races are sorted out, there will be a net loss of 63 House Seats, 6 Senate seats, 6 Governorships, 19 state legislatures, and 680 state legislative seats.
We want to know how this reversal came to be and what it portends for our political future heading into 2012. Are we looking at some kind of ongoing conservative ascendency in American politics, or will the progressive spirit once again resonate with the voters as it did in 2008?
The 2012 cycle of elections will be one of the most important in human history. Whoever controls the government of the United States from 2012 onward will have a pivotal role in determining how we adapt to the dramatic changes of the 2012 time and whether the history of this time will be one of breakdown or breakthrough.
The short answer to the question of what happened to the Democrats in the midterms is they lost the narrative. Elections are not primarily about voters’ rational decision processes. It is almost always about which emotional and symbolic appeal wins the day. The Republican Party controlled the narrative.
The GOP narrative was about opposing Obama’s legislative initiatives that were passed through the Congress with almost no Republican support. These were federal stimulus, health care reform, and financial reform.
To some extent, the Republicans co-opted the Tea Party’s agenda of cutting taxes, limiting government, cutting spending, and reducing the federal deficit.
It’s pretty clear that economic concerns were paramount in the election. People reached the judgment that the Republicans were going to do better with the economic challenges than the Democrats had in their two years in control of the White House and Congress.
If you’re a progressive thinker like myself, you might wonder how this narrative translates into a positive vision of economic prosperity and putting people back to work. How did the Republican Party suddenly become the new best friend of the working class? Why did the Republican/Tea Party’s agenda resonate with so many people?
My reading is that the Republican successes in the midterms are sourced by two main elements. The first element relates to how people are responding to the extraordinary challenges we face in the 2012 time.
The second element is a conservative-corporate conspiracy that is manipulating the anger and fear that originates from the first factor and in some cases inciting it.
I’m come back to the second factor in Part II of this thread. But, first, it is important to acknowledge some reflection of truth in the Republican/Tea Party narrative.
Our civilization is in crisis. This, of course, is just the 2012 time frame of rapid change and decision crossroads we have to navigate. My reading is that the level of economic concern we see in today’s world is ultimately sourced in an explicit or subliminal understanding that the world’s present economic structure is unsustainable.
The issues of overpopulation in some areas, depopulation in others, pollution, environmental degradation, peak oil, exhaustion of other natural resources, and global warming put the planet on the cusp of ecological catastrophe.
Moreover, our capitalistic economic paradigm is based on a model of perpetual expansion. As we’re reaching the limits of planetary resources, this simply can’t continue.
To deal with these challenges, we need a really visionary approach that looks past the present moment to what is going to be needed for a sustainable future. But people don’t want to think about limits and the restructuring of how we live.
In the United States, for the most part, we are in denial about the scope and seriousness of these planetary issues. We’re sleep walking toward 2012 while fear and anxiety about the future increase.
How people respond to crisis ranges from relatively dysfunctional and unhealthy to more functional. The unhealthier responses usually involve acting out against others or self or an attempt to restore the past to the pre-crisis condition.
This last strategy of regressive restoration is dysfunctional because it’s usually based in a denial of the circumstances that led to the crisis in the first place. The focus is on an idealized past where everything was copacetic.
A healthy response to crisis is one which fully acknowledges the underlying factors leading to crisis and embraces the positive changes needed to restore functioning on a new level of meaning.
Let’s assume, for example, that someone suffers a loss of significant relationship like divorce or a loss of employment and livelihood. An individual could give up trying to cope and go into victim regarding their situation. Then they would not seek new work or a new relationship. This would be one form of acting out against oneself.
Acting out against others would not necessary involve violence. It could manifest as blaming others for your circumstances and not taking personal responsibility. Scapegoating and anger against identified enemies would come into play.
If, in our example, individuals pursued a regressive restoration strategy, this would mean trying to find someone as similar as possible to the lost relationship or a job just like the one they lost. This doesn’t have to be an unhealthy strategy. Often it is.
If there is something in ourselves that is sabotaging intimacy in relationship or if there is something in our previous marriage partner choice that we can’t really live with, then finding someone just like the last person will only result in the same unhappy relationship as before. You divorce one person who was an alcoholic and then marry someone else who also has a drinking problem.
In the employment situation, the loss of a job can be an opportunity to change significant aspects of our lives and break out of where we’re stuck.
In my own case, I didn’t get tenure at my job teaching philosophy at a university in North Carolina. I had an offer at another university to continue my career as a full time philosophy teacher. However, it was also in North Carolina. Instead, I chose to come live in California and pursue new lines of work.
It takes courage and vision to embrace the transformation possible in the healthy responses to crisis. If you take time to reflect on what needs to be learned about yourself and your partner choices before recommitting to a new relationship, this usually means you’re not going to be in relationship for a while.
If you choose to use your joblessness as an opportunity to reinvent yourself, your prosperity is probably going to take a hit, at least in the short run. You’re taking on insecurity in the search for new meaning in your life.
The transformational strategy in response to crisis has built-in challenges. It is more likely going to take longer, cost more, and subject you to unforeseen and unexpected circumstances beyond what you initially imagined.
This is because the vision of positive change is bigger than the moment. The vision has to be bigger than the moment if it’s going to take you to new meaning. It must be something beyond what you’re familiar and comfortable with. You’re going for goals beyond what you’ve yet achieved.
If you have a conservative frame of mind, you might question at this point why there has to be new meaning. What’s wrong with the old meaning?
From my progressive bias, I see conservatives as individuals inherently (constitutionally?) opposed to change and defenders of the status quo. But from their point of view, most of what is held to be important, real, and true does not change. It is inviolate, i.e., sacred and sourced in unquestioned religious doctrine.
When this perspective becomes politicized, we see overt aversion to change as in the bumper sticker which says: “I’ll Keep My Guns, Freedom, & Money. You Can Keep The Change!”
It’s understandable then why Obama would be the conservatives’ arch enemy. He is the apostle of progressive reforms in our society. Moreover, he’s a true visionary, someone who is going for the positive changes that he believes are needed to insure a future where there is quality of life, justice, and opportunity.
But his vision is bigger than the moment and we don’t see immediate results. His economic moves, such as the federal stimulus and bank bailouts, most likely saved the world from another Great Depression. But the recovery of the GDP to a positive growth number didn’t result in unemployment levels returning to pre-recession levels in the time between his inauguration and now.
That’s because the world has not yet recovered from the Great Recession and our country has been slower than some to restore full economic growth.
He took on health care reform as a priority because he felt that economic growth would be sabotaged in the long run if health care continued to be a dysfunctional system for a large percentage of Americans.
And, he championed financial reform, in an effort to prevent the circumstances that led to the world-wide economic meltdown in 2008.
My reading is that in the long view of history, Obama’s legislative initiatives will be hailed as truly inspired moves. However, this does little good for him and the Democratic Party in the political environment of 2010.
The midterms have been characterized as a referendum on Obama’s policies and there is some truth in that. Some of the things Obama has done have been emergency measures. For example, he’s supported the bailing out of banks, automobile makers, and, insurance companies as well as taking on an outsized federal deficit to put stimulus money into our ailing economy.
He then gets branded with these temporary measures as the direction he wants to take the country in the long run.
Also, some of the big legislative priorities he got through the Congress were not perceived as having immediate benefit. Some of the health care reforms won’t take effect until 2014.
Reform of Wall Street financial practices might seem irrelevant to people’s immediate economic concerns, especially if they have no investments in financial assets.
Notwithstanding these points, however, it is still difficult to grasp how the Republican swing in 2010 produced such a stark reversal of the political mood of 2008. The Republicans, after all, did not have a positive legislative agenda to speak of during the election. Their agenda was to oppose almost everything Obama tried to do.
My reading is that part of the reason people were so quick to dump Democrats in favor of Republicans is that there is more chaos happening in our collective lives than just economic discontent. The 2012 time frame brings up issues of values, priorities, and identity.
We’re moving into an era of existential confusion where the basic questions of existence are up for reexamination. Who are we as a people, a species? What’s really important to us? What should our priorities be in this uncertain world?
The survey question “Do you think the United States is moving in the right direction?” is going draw a majority of no answers in this 2012 time regardless of who is in power. This is in part due to the fact that the whole world is going in the wrong direction. Awareness of this is present in us, at least at a subliminal level.
In times of crisis and uncertainty, there is often a trend towards conservative political choices. Whoever has confidence and conviction can attract a lot of voters who want stability and direction.
On the other hand, whoever tells the truth about the challenges we face and outlines the complexities of these challenges is going to be at a horrific political disadvantage in the short run.
The big lesson of the 2010 election for Obama and the Democrats then was about the need to communicate their vision of positive change in a way that could connect with people at an emotional and symbolic level.
See Part II of this thread for a continuation of this analysis of the midterms.
Interdimensional Times 